Wednesday, September 2, 2009

ideas are around...

this is what fernando campana told me in 2006 during a workshop at boisbuchet. This has been turning around in my mind for quite some time until last year when I decided to take more seriously my work as a designer, to believe more in my ideas in a certain way.

during the workshop under the direction fernando and humberto campana I developped several sets of cutlery from empty bottles and canisters, I believe this was a great way to approach design and to create something out of rubbish, the first model I did looked something like this (I believe this was a empty bottle of ginger ale or seven up....)

After that, I notice something was really bad in my idea, the cutlery wasn't strong enough to be actually used. but like most of design work doing this little steps pushed me into going forward with this idea. I switched the bottles for empty canisters, this was perfect, the plastic was soft enough to work with but strong enough to use as real ustencils. one plus I did not planed was that canisters came in various and bright colours, this added a playfull meaning to the project, the only thing I did not wanted was to do a project that was to straight or to serious. The following images are some versions I did in the middle of the whole process

I don't have this pair anymore, Fernando Campana bought it from me for 5€!

I don't have this one either, I think Martin Guntert from kassel bought it.

"Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed constantly."

Anyway, the project turn and became a elegant folding flat salad set, it was picked up by pandora design in milano and presented during the milan off in 2007 but never got to production, I'm still looking for a cutlery manufacturer. Here are some of the final models and images from that workshop in summer 2006, It was without a doubt a great and rich experience.

This one is also missing from my models! I hope they are aroud somewhere...

flat salad set by pandora design

I Started experimenting with curved surface shapes from plastic bottles, which ultimately resulted in his elegant fork and spoon Flat Salad set design. The design has been picked up by Milan-based disposable/sustainable cutlery and table accessories company Pandora Design, presented in their new collection during the Milain Fair.

This project came out after a workshop under direction of the Campana Brothers, who guided me during the research process, the first approach to was to use empty plastic bottles and container to create new products, so at the beginning I was looking for shapes that existed already in the bottles trying to smartly cut them out, then using the flat parts of the containers I figured a simple way to fold the plastic sheet to obtain a curved and strong structured shape, yet ergonomic.

The constraints recycling disposable materials can ultimately end up in simple projects like this one.